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As long as David Stern is in a mood to punish people for doing things they’ve done and he’s ignored before, he should not stop with Gregg Popovich.

Popovich sent Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker and Danny Green home on Thursday because he believed the Spurs would benefit more from resting them than having them play a fourth game in five nights against Miami.

He has done this often before, but this time, he sent his stars home on a night the Spurs were playing the reigning champions on TNT, which apparently was a bigger deal in the NBA’s New York offices than the other games San Antonio’s marquee players’ missed. Stern offered an apology and said there would be severe sanctions, though he never seemed to mind all that much when fewer people noticed.

Stern’s sudden concern for the NBA’s customers is fine. Those that purchase tickets ought to get the best product that the NBA can bring them.

Since Duncan, Ginobili, Parker and Green were healthy, the Spurs could have and should have given a better show than having his junior varsity overachieve its way to a surprisingly close game. (Though it really is amazing that Popovich could have those guys ready to play that well). Just because Popovich has the right to do what he considers best for his team doesn’t mean what he chose was the right thing to do.

Beyond the obvious hypocrisy – or at least, inconsistency – of Stern looking the other way so often before but acting indignant now (on the 75th anniversary of Casablanca, we can say he was “shocked, shocked” to learn this is going on), if the NBA is now so concerned with offering the best product possible, shouldn’t the guy that scheduled the Spurs to play four games in five nights while the Heat were off since Saturday face ‘severe sanctions?’

For that matter, every time a team plays a back-to-back, or four games in five nights or six games in eight or nine, the product is not as good as it could be. Every time one team sits home practicing and resting and waiting while another faces a disadvantageous schedule, customers do not get the best possible product.

Fans are expected to accept this as part of the deal when they buy tickets, just as they must accept that players can be hurt or simply have bad games. But just as they should not have to accept healthy players staying home, they should not have to accept having one team at less than its best because of the schedule and coaches should not have to weigh whether their team would be better off exchanging a loss for rest.

The night off probably would not impact his stars’ late-season vitality as much as Popovich’s determination to limit their playing time throughout the season. Arguments can be made that he could have staggered their days off, rather than give all four players the night off on the same night. Or he could have rested them against Orlando, won that game, and had a better chance to beat the Heat, too.

All of that, however, is clearly under the category of coaching decisions, which fall from the role of the commissioner.

The commissioner, excluding his brief dalliance as the de facto owner of the Hornets monitoring his GM’s work, is charged with the business of the league, not the competitive decision making of any one team. He could demand that coaches do their best to win each game, but he cannot prevent them from resting players by claiming minor injuries. Instead, he ought to do everything he can to keep coaches from feeling the need to weigh their teams’ needs against the good of the league and the sport.

Stern claimed contrition about every player in the NBA sitting out every game prior to Christmas last season, but he still deemed it necessary to take that short-term loss last season in the name of what he believed to be long-term good. Arguments can still be made about the benefits of the lockout, but he had earned the confidence of NBA owners that he was doing the right thing for their businesses.

Popovich has often been apologetic when he has chosen to sit players, but has deemed it necessary to sacrifice in the short-term to improve his team’s chances long-term. Valid points can be made about whether a night off in November can really help in May or June, but his employer expects one of the best coaches ever to make those decisions.

This time, however, he rested players on a night the Spurs were playing on TNT, which apparently is more important to the NBA than all the previous times he has rested players. He was honest about it. He could have said that a strangely communicable strain of plantar fasciitis had run through his starting lineup. He could have acted like coaches that tank for better lottery position, a practice much more common over the years in Stern’s league than coaches benching healthy players for rest’s sake.

Commissioner-in-waiting Adam Silver endorsed Popovich’s strategy – or at least his right to exercise it as he sees best – last season when he told USA Today: “Strategic resting of particular players on particular nights is within the discretion of the teams.”

Silver was speaking in the context of the lockout-condensed schedule, but the Spurs have been playing that sort of schedule in November. If Popovich had a right to rest players last season, he would have that right this season.

Popovich sat his stars because of a schedule he believed would hurt his team long term. Remedy the issues with the schedule and there would not be a need to keep coaches from solving them their way.

The NBA should do all it can to remove the sort of stretches the Spurs have faced lately. The league will never shorten the 82-game season, but it could shorten the preseason by a week to start the regular season a week earlier and then extend the regular season by two weeks. Spreading those 82 games over an additional three weeks (four weeks if the union would agree to begin camp a week earlier) and taking out TNT’s exclusive Thursday window would allow the schedule makers to remove the bulk of back-to-backs.

Do that and Popovich and others would not feel they have to sit healthy players. As an added benefit given Stern’s concern, customers would more often get a better product.

Then, rather than going back to looking the other way when convenient, he can start working on coaches that tank for draft lottery position.

Actually, when the Hornets – the eventual lottery winners — benched all of their stars (relatively speaking), some at halftime, in the final game last season and scored seven fourth-quarter points in that loss, who was running that team as de facto owner? Can Stern bring severe sanctions to Stern?